The heat wave over the last two weeks of August and the first nine days of September had students and teachers sweltering in their classrooms.

Boulder was breaking or tying temperature records day after day. Seven of the first nine days in September had highs in the 90s. This included a 94-degree reading Sept. 3, which tied the record set in 1960, and 93 on Sept. 7, which tied the record set in 1953.

A headline in the Camera on Thursday, Sept. 5, said, "Teachers hope for relief next week." As it turned out, there wouldn't be any school for nearly a week as Boulder battled a flood of biblical proportions.

You notice I left off Sept. 12. The record for that date was 1.24 inches, set in 2008. That record was broken by nearly 800 percent. The 9.08 inches set an all-time single-day record (previously 4.80 inches July 31, 1919).

The previous wettest month was May 1995, with 9.59 inches. This September's storm total was 17.15 inches. Prior to the storm, Boulder was 3.1 inches behind its normal moisture total. September's 18.16 inches of rain pushed the annual total to 31.40 inches. With three months to go, 2013 is already the wettest year on record in Boulder (previously 29.93 inches in 1995).

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But what was the size of the flood? When the Big Thompson flooded in 1976, it was quickly called a 100-year flood. It was subsequently upgraded to a 500-year flood. In 1986, it was further upgraded to a 10,000-year flood.

Authorities were quick to call this September's destructive flood a 100-year flood. The previous 100-year flood occurred May 31, 1894, when Boulder Creek's peak flow was 11,000 cubic feet per second. That day got more than 5 inches of rain, but the rain fell on a prodigious snowpack that was rapidly melting.

Our recent flood peaked at just over 5,000 cfs. Authorities no longer use the year frequency designation because it can be too confusing, but authorities only added to the confusion by calling this September's event a 1,000-year rain.

Jennifer Francis, a research scientist at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, surmises that this outlandish rain was the result of a split jet stream. In an NPR interview Sept. 25, she said, "High up in the atmosphere, one stream was carrying moist air from the Pacific to the Rockies. Then, lower down, an unusual eddy was pulling in more moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, an unusual bulge in the jet streams was causing all this weather to stall near Boulder."

Also implied was her idea that with climate change this could be a new normal aspect of Earth's future weather.

How many of you shared my angst when more than one-half inch of rain fell throughout the day Sept. 27?

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